Righteous in Canada

During their stay the delegates will visit Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. The Righteous are Marianna Krasnodębska, Janina Rożecka, and Marian Gołębiowski, and the Rescued is Joanna Sobolewska. They are accompanied by the Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the President, Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka, and a Deputy Director of the Museum of History of Polish Jews, Ewa Wierzyńska.

The delegation is to meet with representatives of the Polish diplomatic corps and participate in a celebration hosted by the Canadian Parliament in honor of the Righteous. They are also scheduled to participate in the ceremonies commemorating the anniversary of founding the General Anders Polish Army Veterans’ Association and visit a Jewish senior citizens home ran by B’nai Brith Canada, for an annual banquet.

The program of the visit also includes meeting with representatives of the Polish and Jewish communities and schoolchildren and students, to whom the Righteous and the Rescued will relate their war-time stories.

A vital point of the trip will be the meeting between the Righteous and the Rescued Anna Clark, Truda Rosenberg, and Renata Zajdman. The Righteous and the Rescued are to participate in a concert and a celebratory dinner.

It bears notice that in March this year a delegation of the Righteous visited the United States and participated in the celebration of the international Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In relation to the Canada delegation, a press conference was held at the Presidential Palace on October 30th, including the organizers, representatives of the Righteous who had visited the US in March as well as the Righteous scheduled to visit Canada, and the Rescued. Among the participants were also the head of the Department of Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the MFA, Aleksandra Piątkowska, ambassador Maciej Kozłowski, the Plenipotentiary of the MFA for Polish-Jewish Relations, and Ewa Wierzyńska, a Deputy Director of the Museum of History of Polish Jews.

Minister Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka called the Righteous our greatest national treasure. Although heretofore the people honored as Righteous were among the better-known participants of the war, Minister Junczyk-Ziomecka wishes to see the silent heroes also recognized.

Ambassador Kozłowski said: “These visits contribute to us getting closer and reducing the chasm between Poland and the Jewish community in America. The cooperation of the Chancellery of the President, the MFA, and the MHPJ proves that, as long as we have the will, we are capable of great things.”

The Righteous Tadeusz Stankiewicz referred his experiences from his visit in the US. He said he was uneasy going there, but was met with warmth and great interest, especially from the youth during the meetings at universities. “The younger generations of Jews, raised in democracy, did not comprehend why, when help was punishable by death, people still did help. They said it was an irrational act.” The Righteous responded: “That was what we felt was right, what our parents felt…”

A member of the current delegation, Janina Rożecka, stressed how glad she was to take part in the trip. She has amassed considerable experience in her contacts with the youth, as she is a regular participant of similar meetings in schools in Poland.

The Rescued Joanna Sobolewska recalled that even while she was browsing through the album “Poles who rescued Jews during the Holocaust,” she was looking for her family members among the names of the rescued. Maybe some of them had survived? We all want to know where we come from and what happened to our families. Joanna Sobolewska has two families: the family who rescued her and the family that was lost. It is not an easy life.

Ewa Wierzyńska summarized the goals and achievements of the Polish Righteous project: as part of the project, 80 researchers conducted 220 interviews with the Righteous and the rescuers in the last three years. During this last year, summaries of the interviews, excerpts from the recordings, and photographs were published at www.sprawiedliwi.org.pl.

At the end of the conference Minister Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka underlined that “few are as entitled to organize such a visit” as Poland’s ambassador in Canada, Piotr Ogrodziński. The ambassador’s father, Przemysław Ogrodziński, was a co-founder and a member of the Żegota Council in Lviv, and his grandmother and aunt are both numbered among the Righteous Among the Nations.